The three nostalgic British musicals in the Cliff Richard DVD Collection are a good reminder that, thanks to a few short years in the 1960s, Sir Cliff can legitimately include "film star" on his already exceptional show business CV. The Young Ones (1961), Summer Holiday (1963) and Wonderful Life (1964) would make tame fare for a teen audience today, but they retain a polished and honest charm which might surprise the sharpest of cynics. First and foremost, of course, they were Cliff Richard vehicles: designed to showcase his all-round talents and capitalise on his first, heady wave of pop chart success. They are also unashamed homages to the heyday of the MGM B-musical with familiar themes: let's put on a show/save the youth club/make a film. But with up-and-coming directors Sidney Furie and Peter Yates making imaginative and sophisticated use of wide-angle camera work and fresh, snappy choreography by Herbert Ross and Gillian Lynne, they also have plenty of assets other than Cliff's wholesome appeal. There are some fine set pieces and surreal flashes, notably the history of cinema in Wonderful Life and the extraordinary mime sequence in Summer Holiday. They also tap into the very British energy of a group of young actors and dancers including Una Stubbs, Susan Hampshire, Melvyn Hayes and Richard O'Sullivan, as well as Cliff's band at the time, The Shadows. For sheer verve, they deserve to be seen on their own merits. On the DVD: The Cliff Richard DVD Collection has been pristinely restored; the colours and clarity, not to mention the use of Cinemascope, leap off the screen (aspect ratio 2.35:1). The mono soundtrack recreates the authentic bandbox sound of the 1960s. Aside from theatrical trailers, the most notable extras are directors' commentaries: actually Furie and Yates in occasionally long-winded conversation with film and music writers. Both men give fascinating insight into the film-making climate in Britain in the early 1960s.--Piers Ford
All 5 series of the hit BBC show, collected for the first time in this DVD set. Includes subtitles for the Hard Of Hearing
Newspaper editor Nick Condon (James Cagney) is the crusading chief of the Tokyo Chronicle in 1920s Japan. He has his suspicions about Japanese plans for future expansion suspicions that are confirmed when he runs an article accusing Japanese Premier Tanaka (John Emery) and Colonel Tojo (Robert Armstrong) of planning world conquest and gets a visit from the Imperial Police. Then one of his reporters Ollie Miller (Wallace Ford) and his wife Edith (Rosemary DeCamp) are murdered shortly
Marlon Brando in his breakthrough and most iconic role as Johnny Strabler, ruthless leader of the Black Rebels motorcycle gang who terrorise a small town. Based on real-life events, the film was considered so shocking and inciteful of delinquent behaviour at the time, it was banned in the UK until 1967. Special Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio Audio commentary by author and film historian Jeanine Basinger The Wild One and the BBFC (2017, 25 mins): ex-BBFC examiner Richard Falcon discusses the film's history with the British censor Introduction to the film by Karen Kramer (2007, 1 min) Hollister, California: Bikers, Booze and the Big Picture (2007, 28 mins): a look back at the real life events that inspired the film Brando: An Icon Is Born (2007, 19 mins): a documentary exploring the life and career of the legendary actor Super 8 version (1973, 19 mins): original cut-down home cinema presentation with unique narration Original theatrical trailer Image gallery New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
With a company of American soldiers trapped by the Germans during The Battle of the Bulge their captain is an abject psychopathic coward who has a record of exposing his men to danger. When his cowardice turns to sheer panic during combat it becomes necessary for the enlisted men to take things into their own hands...
Director Richard Brooks' marvellous ode to friendship, loyalty and disillusionment The Professionals may not have the stylistic bravado or fatalistic doom of Sam Peckinpah's more famous The Wild Bunch, but Brooks' storytelling is simple and steady and just as insightful. The difference is that Brooks is a lot more optimistic. Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster are buddies who have drifted into oblivion after fighting together in the Mexican Revolution. Marvin, the principled loyalist and munitions expert, lost his wife and his heart. Lancaster, the dynamite expert and unprincipled adventurer, keeps losing his pants. They team up with wrangler Robert Ryan and archer Woody Strode to rescue the beguiling Claudia Cardinale, who has been kidnapped by their old revolutionary buddie Jack Palance. So it's back into bloody Mexico they go on a "mission of mercy" for railroad tycoon Ralph Bellamy, who's paying handsomely for the return of his wife. But nothing is what it seems in this exciting, existential adventure, which was beautifully shot by Conrad Hall. Sarcastic quips, philosophical musings and heart-rending reversals underlie Brooks' humanistic sentiments. These are tired, world-weary men who somehow find the strength and the will to pull together for the sake of love and commitment. Through it all, Brooks seems to be lamenting a decline in professionalism much deeper than his story. He's decrying Hollywood and the society at large, anticipating Peckinpah's later strategy. --Bill Desowitz
Amid World War 1, a damaged German warship is being repaired in an inlet near Zanzibar. Hearing this news, a British aristocrat an American businessman, and his daughter formulate a plan to destroy the battle cruiser in its weakened state. Starring Roger Moore (Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun) and Lee Marvin (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank) and based on the best-selling novel by Wilbur Smith, this entertaining wartime romp from director Peter R Hunt (You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service) is guaranteed to keep you transfixed from its intriguing beginning to its explosive climax.
A coolly riveting crime saga from director Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler Soylent Green) Violent Saturday tells a brutal noir tale against blazing sun-drenched Arizona landscapes. Three criminals arrive in the small mining town of Bradenville planning on robbing its only bank. But as they start scouting the area and gathering the information they need the lives of others in the town threaten to get mixed up in their scheme in a tangle that could lead to disastrous consequences. Featuring the iconic Victor Mature and Lee Marvin and with Ernest Borgnine in one of his most unforgettable roles Violent Saturday is a fascinating gem of Hollywood storytelling complete with memorably vicious and idiosyncratic details brilliant performances and stunning Cinemascope imagery. Violent Saturday is based on a novel by William L. Heath. Special Features: Stunning high-definition master with 4.0 and 2.0 soundtracks on both Blu-ray and DVD A new video examination of the making of the film by Nicolas Saada A video appreciation by director William Friedkin
In autumn 2004 an all star line up of some of the world's greatest guitarists and thousands of fans gathered at London's Wembley Arena to celebrate the 50th birthday of a music legend the Fender Stratocaster guitar. Members of Queen Genesis Thin Lizzy The Crickets The Shadows Free The Eagles Roxy Music Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones... plus solo stars Albert Lee Jamie Cullum and Theresa Andersson. Tracklist: 1. Peggy Sue - The Crickets Albert Lee and Brian May
""Somebody's going to pay...because he forgot to kill me."" Ruthless criminals a dedicated honest cop sultry women and a gripping plot - all the elements of a classic police action-drama are here in full force. Police Sergeant Bannion (Glenn Ford) is investigating the apparent suicide of a corrupt cop then is suddenly ordered to stop - and The Big Heat is on. Driven to unravel the mystery Bannion continues probing until an explosion meant for him kills his wife. He
New York Stories comprises three views of life in the city of all cities, with segments directed by Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. The best of the three is Scorsese's "Life Lessons", about an artist (played by Nick Nolte) who uses his hyper-success to lure beautiful, young, aspiring artists to serve as his assistant/lovers. It's an astute portrait of the nature of the New York art world. In "Life Without Zoe", Coppola portrays the life of the privileged daughter of a world-renowned flautist, whose adventures on the Upper East Side (in the upper echelons of society) play like something approaching a cartoon. Woody Allen finishes up the film with his "Oedipus Wrecks", a typical Allen number about a successful New York lawyer who's still hounded by his mother--the title tells you all you need to know. Though stronger segments to complement Scorsese's would have made the movie as a whole much more interesting and enjoyable, it does at least provide an accurate glimpse of life in the Big Apple. --James McGrath, Amazon.com
Director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill) clearly set out to make an old-fashioned Western, but he couldn't help bringing a hip, self-conscious attitude to the proceedings. Silverado thus finds its own funky tone--sometimes rousing, sometimes winking. Four cowboys--Kevin Kline (a distinctly modern kind of Western hero), Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and the rowdy young Kevin Costner--converge on a little Western burg called Silverado. Kasdan peppers the somewhat generic action with smart dialogue and a parade of quirky supporting players, including John Cleese as a sheriff who seems to have stepped straight from a Monty Python sketch into an Old West saloon. Bruce Broughton supplies the music, a real throwback to the glory days of thundering Western themes. One thing's for sure: Silverado's a lot more fun than the later Kasdan-Costner Western, Wyatt Earp. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com
The satirical comedy Police Squad pits an ace detective and his captain (Leslie Nielsen & Alan North) against the criminal elements that befoul a big city. From the creators of Airplane!. Episodes Comprise: 1. A Substantial Gift (The Broken Promise) 2. Ring of Fear (A Dangerous Assignment) 3. Butler Did It the (A Bird in the Hand) 4. Revenge and Remorse (The Guilty Alibi) 5. Rendezvous at Big Gulch (Terror in the Neighborhood) 6. Testimony of Evil (Dead Men Don't Laugh)
Humphrey Bogart is heartbreaking as the tragic Captain Queeg in this 1954 film, based on a novel by Herman Wouk, about a mutiny aboard a navy ship during World War II. Stripped of his authority by two officers under his command (played by Van Johnson and Robert Francis) during a devastating storm, Queeg becomes a crucial witness at a court martial that reveals as much about the invisible injuries of war as anything. Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Raintree County) directs the action scenes with a sure hand and nudges his all-male cast toward some of the most well-defined characters of 1950s cinema. The courtroom scenes alone have become the basis for a stage play (and a television movie in 1988), but it is a more satisfying experience to see the entire story in context. --Tom Keogh
John Wayne is a Texas Ranger in this rollicking, good humored western, assigned to bring an arms-running gang to justice. After Wayne arrests one of the criminals, matters are complicated when they wander into an area controlled by the Comancheros- a group of Anglos aiding the warring Comanche Indians. Director Curtiz' last film is based on the novel by Paul I. Wellman.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a late film from the long career of director John Ford that tells of the civilising of an Old West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. Ford's nostalgia for the past is tempered by his stark approach, unusual for the visual poet of Stagecoach and The Searchers. The two heavyweights, John Wayne and James Stewart, are good together, with Wayne the embodiment of rugged individualism and Stewart the idealistic prophet of the civilisation that will eventually tame the Wild West. This may be the saddest Western ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, and as cleanly beautiful as its central symbol, the cactus rose. --Robert Horton
Includes subtitles for the Hard Of Hearing
David Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart is an utterly random and ugly experience with pockets of startling imagery and inspired set pieces. Based on a Barry Gifford novel, the film stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as lovers on the lam whose relationship is tested and who meet some truly dangerous wackos (including an almost-simian Willem Dafoe). Lynch's thoughts seem to be everywhere, and he expects the audience to keep up with a story that seems more a collection of avant-garde whims than a coherent vision with the intuitive brilliance of his Blue Velvet. Cage gives one of his more chaotic performances, but then he was just reading Lynch's signposts. --Tom Keogh
This is a John Wayne Western double-bill featuring The Comancheros (1961) and The Undefeated (1969). Nobody made a fuss about The Comancheros when it came out, yet it has proved to be among the most enduringly entertaining of John Wayne's later Westerns. The Duke, just beginning to crease and thicken toward Rooster Cogburn proportions, plays a veteran Texas Ranger named Jake Cutter who joins forces with a New Orleans dandy (Stuart Whitman) to subdue rampaging Indians and the evil white men behind their uprising. The Comancheros was the last credit for Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), who, ravaged by cancer, ceded much of the direction to Wayne (uncredited) and action specialist Cliff Lyons. With support from Wayne stalwarts James Edward Grant (co-screenplay) and William Clothier (camera), the first of many rousing Elmer Bernstein scores for a Wayne picture and a big, flavourful cast including Lee Marvin (the once and future Liberty Valance), Nehemiah Persoff, Bruce Cabot, and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams (in his last movie), they made a broad, cheerfully bloodthirsty adventure movie for red-meat-eating audiences of all ages. In The Undefeated Wayne and Rock Hudson each play a Civil War commander who, after the ceasefire, lead a community of folks into Mexico to make a fresh start. Hudson is a Southern gentleman; Wayne commanded the Yankee cavalry at Shiloh, where Hudson's brother died. Nevertheless, Rock, with his extended family, and Duke, with his troop of cowboys and 3,000 horses to sell to Emperor Maximilian, soon join forces to outgun banditos and beam paternally over the budding romance between their respective daughter and son. Lingering North-South animosities are celebrated in an obligatory communal fistfight, and the showdown with both Maximilian's lancers and the rebel Juaristas is disconcertingly perfunctory. --Richard T Jameson
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